Mayer Brown hires insurance-linked securities partner Stephen Rooney from Dewey & LeBoeuf

Another high-profile partner with significant insurance-linked securities experience from law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf has moved on from the firm to join one of their competitors. Just last month a team of ILS and catastrophe bond focused structured finance lawyers left the firm for competitor Willkie Farr & Gallagher. Now Mayer Brown have announced that Stephen Rooney has joined their firm after 20 years at Dewey & LeBoeuf which saw him serve as global chair of the firm’s Structured Finance Practice Group.

With this latest departure Dewey & LeBoeuf have now lost a significant team of lawyers with transactional counsel experience of insurance-linked securities transactions. Rooney has been involved in many high-profile ILS and cat bond transactions and is widely known within the sector. He joins Mayer Brown as a partner and co-leader of their Insurance Finance Group.

“Steve is widely recognized in the insurance industry for the breadth of his transactional experience, including securities offerings, corporate finance, structured finance and M&A, and he is particularly noted for his pioneering work in insurance-linked securities,” said Kenneth R. Pierce, co-leader of Mayer Brown’s global Insurance Industry Group.

Edward Best, leader of Mayer Brown’s Capital Markets Group, added, “We are very excited about Steve joining Mayer Brown. He will further strengthen Mayer Brown’s ability to serve our clients and will reinforce our strong position in the worldwide insurance transactional markets.”

Rooney has a been involved in ILS offerings for a number of years and has been involved in catastrophe bond offerings sponsored by Allstate, Aspen, Catlin, Liberty Mutual, Munich Re, Nationwide, Scottish Re and State Farm, among others. He has also been involved in securitization of term life insurance regulatory reserves on a number of occasions. His experience goes outside the ILS and cat bond sector to include IPO’s, other types of securities offerings and mergers and acquisitions.

Stephen Rooney said; “Mayer Brown’s capabilities and global reputation in insurance capital markets, M&A and finance are outstanding, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute my talents and experience to the Mayer Brown team.”

Dewey & LeBoeuf have lost around 47 partners since the start of the year in a range of disciplines. Their insurance practice has been particularly affected. This was expected as the firm has undergone restructuring and changes to their compensation regimes. Dewey & LeBoeuf is a huge law firm and continues to be involved in large structured finance transactions, however one has to think that their involvement in the cat bond and insurance-linked securities sector may take a while to recover the experience that has been lost after all of these senior departures.